East Ventures leads seed round in Indonesian social commerce startup

Indonesia-based social commerce enabler Desty said it has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding in a round led by early-stage VC firm East Ventures.

Desty is a digital platform that serves as a single online destination for creators, influencers, and merchants to promote and sell their products. It currently offers two products, a landing page generator called Desty Page and Desty Store, a service that allows users to create an online store complimentary to marketplaces.

Desty CEO and founder Bill Wang / Photo credit: East Ventures

“Doing business in times of a pandemic is challenging, but we believe that acceleration of digitalization brings an opportunity to grow,” said Desty CEO and founder Bill Wang. “Having an online presence is not an option anymore, now it is the only way.”

Prior to Desty, Wang had been with Alibaba for 17 years. His co-founder Eric Natanael, meanwhile, is an executive with local and global experiences in various industries.

Desty was launched in October of this year and now claims to work with thousands of users, including online brands, content creators, and influencers from the food, travel, lifestyle, and fashion industries. The company said it recently finished integration with key local partners to add payment and logistics to its store platform.

According to Desty, it plans to use the new funds to accelerate its product development and user acquisition, aiming to have roughly 100,000 users by the first half of 2021.

“We are excited to work with Desty to help the millions of Indonesian online sellers and content creators to connect their businesses across multiple ecommerce and social media platforms,” said East Ventures managing partner and co-founder Willson Cuaca.

According to a recent report from Facebook and Bain & Company, almost 70% of consumers in the region will go digital by the end of 2020. The study also found that the average spend per consumer will more than triple to US$429 in 2025 from US$124 in 2018.